Last night, Adage reported that Overstock “is stepping back from the O.co name “for now,” though not abandoning it outright.” Earlier today, .CO Registry founder and CEO Juan Calle posted an interview with someone from Overstock and labelled the change of course “a blip on the radar.”

I think this has been discussed quite a bit already today, but because I received a few emails asking for my opinion, I am going to opine. Keep in mind that I am and always have been a .com buyer/seller, so take my opinion with the same grain of salt you’d take from any comment from the peanut gallery.

With all due respect, if you bought .CO domain names simply because one large internet retailer made the decision to rebrand with a .CO domain name, you didn’t make such a wise decision. Yes, I do think that there will be greater and faster consumer adoption of .CO (and any gTLD) with more and larger companies using and marketing the extensions as their own. However, the world is far larger than any one company and/or marketing campaign.

I believe there are still plenty of reasons to own and invest in .CO (or other ccTLD and gTLD) domain names, and I’ve said all along that my time horizon is likely 5 years +/- for .CO. Just like the Meet.ME sale, all it really takes is one company deciding to utilize an extension to make someone sell a domain investment profitably. That said, the likelihood of owning a particular domain name that a company will pay top dollar for is minimal – in any extension

I still think good .CO domain names purchased for good prices will turn out to be profitable investments, but buying one simply because one company made a big marketing campaign and name change announcement is short sighted.

The introduction and marketing of new gTLDs will be rife with ups and downs. A domain investor needs to analyze domain names, both left and right of the dot, and determine why a particular domain name would have value, how much value it would have, and who might want to buy it. Don’t invest in domain names because of what one company is doing. Buy them because you have a vision for what many companies and consumers may think in the future.

Just because a company like Bitly is using a .LY doesn’t mean you should go out and buy a bunch of Libya ccTLDs. You should invest in domain names because you have conviction that they are going to be more valuable than what you are paying.

In case you didn’t read the original post about Ammar Kubba’s Movember fundraising effort, I wanted to post an update. As of November 14, Ammar’s moustache has helped to raise $1,815 for the Movember organization, which raises money and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

From the photo on the left, it appears that Ammar’s moustache growth is very close to over taking his entire face. I understand that if Ammar is able to grow out his facial hair enough, he will attempt to transfer it to his follically-challenged head.

Alternatively, at the end of the month, Ammar is considering a donation of his moustache to another great organization, Locks of Love, which is a “non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children.”

I read a press release this morning announcing that the VU.com domain name and website sold for $700,000 last week. Canada-based Virtual Universe Corporation reached a deal with US-based Mortgage Research Center, LLC on November 9, 2011.

From my perspective, it looks more like this was a domain name deal with a website included, although it probably won’t be recorded as a pure domain sale.

From the press release:

“Virtual Universe Corporation (the “Company”) (TSXV-VU), announced today that it has agreed to sell its entire right, title and interest in the domain name VU.COM, together with any unregistered trade-mark rights resulting from the Company’s use of such domain name (the “Domain Name”) to Mortgage Research Center LLC for $700,000 USD (the “Sale”).

The Company will retain all right, title, and interest in and to the materials on the website located at the Domain Name as of the effective date of the Sale (the “Website”) including all copyrights to webpages designed for the Website, page layouts for the Website, all graphics used at the Website, all databases generated for the Website, and all banner advertisements for the Website. The Company will move its existing web presence to a new domain, VUCORP.CA.”

Congratulations to both companies on the deal. Virtual Universe Corporation will now operate its business on VUCORP.CA.

Update: As George correctly points out in the comment section, the seller retains the website and all of its contents, so this is a pure domain sale.

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